I'm good.
It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very pleased to come here today to represent our chief, Chief Terrance Paul, from our community of Membertou, which is my own community. Accountability, transparency, and disclosure of information to our people is very important to our leadership and all members in the community, whether it be elders, youth, young mothers, or children. Over decades our community has provided full disclosure of our complete audit, and more recently on our website, at www.membertou.ca, the complete details of compensation to all the members of council.
We do this because we believe in informing and maintaining a strong trust relationship with the entire community. Such information is essential so that all members, both on and off reserve, clearly understand what our council is doing to make their lives better and benefit all the members of our community. The legislation, Bill C-27, An Act to enhance the financial accountability and transparency of First Nations, will have no impact on our community because we already make these disclosures as a matter of practice. We provide all this information on our public website, which is accessible to our community members and to the general public.
I do have concerns that the process will be imposed on me and others, even though we already do this. I think such strong action does impact the relationship between our community and the federal government, in particular the fairness of treatment, where everybody states that we are first nations and have a government-to-government relationship.
Secondly, I wonder about the degree to which such actions will ensure supporting our efforts to achieve self-reliance and economic independence for our community and our people. For the communities that have made this disclosure as a matter of practice for at least five years and that have strong governance and accountability, has any thought been given to perhaps exempting them from the provisions of this new act?
Another key issue is the considerable work our community has done, beyond certain land section provisions of the Indian Act, to move under the First Nations Land Management Act to further control our future. On finances, our community continues to be ISO certified, and additionally, our first nation has made further efforts to be certified by the Financial Management Board and thus to move on to access long-term financial capital from the First Nations Finance Authority.
All of this work we have done as a first nation I believe clearly demonstrates our high standard of governance and accountability. I feel we are a government and do all the things needed to build trust, credibility, and confidence in the way we work for the best interests of our community.
In addition to what we do publicly, our first nation community must also still comply with all the detailed reporting requirements as decreed by the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada reporting handbook, developed by AANDC alone, as per the conditions of the five-year multi-year funding agreement that we have signed with AANDC. The time my staff has to spend to complete these obligations is significant and is done at our own first nation's cost. These reporting requirements and the need for documentation seem to have increased, even though a few years ago the Conservative government committed to an improved funding relationship. The continual and increasing reporting burden on our first nation must be addressed.
This act addresses only issues of audit disclosure and disclosure of compensation of councils. Nowhere does the act help address the short two-year timeframe of councils under the Indian Act system or the issue of providing pensionable earnings for first nations leaders who have dedicated their entire lives to the service of their communities.
All the information required by the new act is already being provided by the first nations in Canada to AANDC, as per their existing funding agreements over years and decades. Only last year the issue was pushed to the forefront, and now a bill will require all first nations to comply or INAC or AANDC will release the information, and as a last resort, all funding will be stopped.
Has anybody fully looked at the implications of stopping all federal funding and the implications of cancelling a funding agreement for a first nation, or at the people in the community who are depending on these basic services, such as educational, social, infrastructure, and health services?
From my perspective, the real issue that needs action is the urgent need for full recognition and implementation of our aboriginal and treaty rights. These rights, not addressed, will continue to be real liabilities to governments.
From the starting point of our rights, our first nations communities and people would, I feel, have the needed tools to move over time from the current heavy reliance on federal funding and programs towards real economic self-reliance, at a pace that they would decide as a government. It is clear that in many of our communities high levels of poverty persist, and the lack of hope and no clear future is what all first nations leaders have to deal with every day.
The existing reserve system was created a very long time ago. The reserves were supposed to be temporary solutions to the Indian problem; we were supposed to migrate and be assimilated into society. This did not happen, and we continue to thrive and grow as a community and a people.
In our community of Membertou, we must look inward and beyond our community to get enough skilled and educated employees to do all the work that is required for the delivery of services and to pursue many aspects of business and economic development. In Membertou, we support all the community members who have pursued lifelong education and training for employment, to give each person the much-needed knowledge and skill set to succeed.
To the community of Membertou, building economic self-reliance and having a strong, accountable government are keys to ensure that we achieve the long-term goal of ensuring the well-being and continued improvement of the lives of all our people.
Thank you. Wela'lin.